Alarm systems, such as fire alarm systems, typically include a plurality of notification appliances, such as horn/strobe units, that are installed throughout a monitored building and are configured to be activated upon the detection of an alarm condition, such as the presence of fire or smoke. Occupants of the building may thereby be notified of a potentially hazardous condition and may evacuate the building or take other action before being harmed. It is therefore critically important that notification appliances of alarm systems always be in good working order.
Governmental entities may require that notification appliances, and particularly those of fire alarm systems, be tested and/or inspected periodically to verify that such appliances are operating properly and have not been physically compromised in some way (e.g. painted over, loosened from a mounting, etc.). Such testing and inspection are typically performed by one or more designated inspectors who walk through an entire monitored building and physically visit each and every notification appliance installed therein. The inspectors may visually inspect each appliance and may activate each appliance for a predetermined amount of time to verify functionality. The inspectors may thereafter manually note their observations to create a record of the inspection.
Because testing and physically inspecting notification appliances can be time-consuming and may require visiting areas of a building that are not readily accessible, it is not uncommon for inspectors to take certain shortcuts, or to be suspected of taking shortcuts. For example, an inspector might avoid testing and inspecting notification appliances that are inconveniently located or that the inspector deems to be of lessor importance than others (e.g. appliances that are located in less populated areas of a building).
A further shortcoming associated with traditional physical testing and inspection methods is that there is no convenient way to keep track of which notification appliances have been tested and inspected and which have not. Inspectors must generally devise manual, ad hoc or procedural methods for dealing with this issue. Such manual tracking methods can be highly complex and cumbersome, especially if numerous inspectors are involved and/or if the testing and inspection of a system must be performed over a number of days. Moreover, such methods are susceptible to a certain level of inconsistency that is naturally attendant with any complex, manual task of this type, which may result in some devices being tested and inspected more than once or, worse, may result some devices not being tested and inspected at all.
Yet another shortcoming associated with traditional physical testing and inspection methods is that notification appliances can be very difficult to find, especially in large buildings in which appliances may be installed in obscure or out-of-the-way locations. This may result in a significant amount of time being spent backtracking through a building to search for “stray” notification appliances that were missed on a first pass, and/or may lead to notification appliances being completely neglected by accident.